Enphase

By Bryan WalshThursday, Apr. 17, 2008

Enphase

Information technology (IT) was hardly a common concept 20 years ago, but
oday it's hard to imagine doing business without it. Yet for most of its
existence, the energy industry has made little use of IT  and that's
been the case with the clean energy industry as well. Enphase Energy is
trying to change that paradigm. The start-up provides a solar energy
management system, which uses special micro-inverters designed to
significantly boost the efficiency of any solar set up. Normally, solar
installations contain a number of solar panels, but the entire installation
shares one inverter, which converts the electricity generated by all the
panels for use in our homes and businesses. If there's a fault in one panel,
the entire system can slow down  just like a chain of Christmas lights
goes out if one bulb malfunctions. Enphase puts micro-inverters on each
individual panel in an installation, which boosts overall productivity. Even
better, Enphase's micro-inverters communicate via the Internet, allowing the
company to track the performance of every solar panel during every minute of
every day. "It's a blending of information technology and power," says Paul
Nahi, Enphase's CEO. "We make sure every system performs to its maximum."